


so i wait for you like a lonely house

by mygalfriday (BrinneyFriday)



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-22
Updated: 2015-04-22
Packaged: 2018-03-25 06:29:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3800311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrinneyFriday/pseuds/mygalfriday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He spends six months mixing colors until he’s satisfied that he has captured the exact shade of her hair, a million little hues of yellow and gold and brown and red on his palette. He spends another meticulous year sketching out every single curl, his fingers moving over the canvas with agonizing, dedicated thoroughness. Slowly, painting River Song becomes his life’s work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	so i wait for you like a lonely house

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a prompt I found on Pinterest about a magical paintbrush that allows the painter to bring the dead back to life. Happy Anniversary to my two favorite time travelers:)

_So I wait for you like a lonely house until_

_you will see me again and live in me._

_Until then my windows ache._  

 

– Pablo Neruda

 

A few years into his long stay on Christmas, he begins to paint again. He used to paint all the time. It was a way to pass the hours between adventures with his Ponds, or something to do when his wife was sleeping and he needed to be quiet. He studied with all the greats and this body seems to have an artist’s touch – at least in front of a canvas – but he lost the desire a long time ago.

 

Aside from a brief respite to paint his mystery girl Clara during his stay at a monastery, waiting for her to cross his path again, he hasn’t touched a paintbrush in centuries. He has no intention to begin again but the children change his mind. Children are always doing that.

 

He tells them stories of his adventures, all of them gathered around him with wide round eyes as he regales them with one unbelievable tale after another. He tells them of an old man and the most beautiful blue box running away together, of Star Whales and fish vampires, robot dogs and clockwork people. He tells them of a Roman who waited and the red-haired girl who remembered the whole universe into existence. He tells them of the one woman who mattered, the one who saved him over and over again, even if he could never quite return the favor. He tells them about a still point in the middle of all of history happening at once, his hand wrapped around a bowtie and the way her eyes outshone the eternal twilight around them.

 

Children are visual creatures. They want to see, not just hear. They draw him pictures of his stories and he cherishes every single one of them. He plasters them all over his walls, colorful etchings of some of the best, happiest moments of his life. It’s a nice reminder, here at the end of everything.

 

It’s a late, quiet night when he ransacks his old little house looking for supplies. The ghosts in his head are restless tonight and he hopes, perhaps in vain, that putting them down on paper will quiet them. Canvas is easy enough to come by and paint he can make himself with the right ingredients. He just needs a brush. He empties cupboards and upends sofa cushions, finding pens and pencils and quills but not a brush. His search leads him upstairs, to the attic room he never ventures into.

 

He stands in the doorway, glancing around at the white sheets covering furniture, protecting it from dust and age. The only thing that isn’t covered is the antique desk sitting right in front of the balcony and the Doctor knows if daylight lasted longer than a few minutes on Christmas, the light would have been perfect up here. The desk is made of dark, heavy wood, the edges worn away and the once shiny handles dulled a smooth brass. The desktop is scratched and stained, weathered by time.

 

It calls to him in the starlight, like a warm fire in the cold. He approaches slowly, inspecting all the tiny drawers and wondering at the secrets they might hold. There are cubbyholes stuffed with brittle papers and glass wells filled with long dried ink. The Doctor pays them no mind and his hand reaches out like he has done exactly this a million times before. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for but he knows just how to find it.

 

Fingers feeling beneath the worn edges of the desk, he fumbles only a moment before his fingertips catch on the delicate mechanism he had known, somewhere deep in his hearts, was there. He pulls and a tiny hiding place reveals itself, a slender drawer that pops open beneath the desk. The Doctor feels the corners of his mouth lifting into a smile, that old familiar thrill shooting through him at the possibility of the unknown.

 

Crouching, he reaches into the drawer and pulls out the only thing inside, his breath catching in his throat when he holds it up to the light of the stars and sees a paintbrush. The handle is hand-carved wood, chipped and splattered with old paint. The bristles are hard and frayed with use. It’s old and battered and in desperate need of cleaning but somehow, he knows – it will create wonders.

 

-

 

He doesn’t sleep that night, meticulously cleaning the paintbrush until the old paint has been washed away and the bristles are soft and ready for use once again. He mixes paints without thought but when the first stroke of his brush on canvas is bright blue, it comes as no surprise. He smiles and whiles away the wee hours of the morning painting his oldest and dearest friend.

 

When he’s finished he steps back with a critical tilt of his head, studies the painting, decides it isn’t bad for his first in decades, and leaves it to dry. He washes the paint off his hands, rinsing his brush and carefully setting it aside. He dresses for the day and has a few biscuits for breakfast, humming to himself as he looks out his kitchen window, waiting to hear the sound of little voices. They always come by before school, just to say hello. He’ll show them his painting, he decides. They’d like to see the Old Girl.

 

When he hears small, piping voices and the patter of many feet on his creaking porch, the Doctor smiles to himself and goes to get the painting, calling out, “Come in, come in. Knocking is silly!”

 

He stops in the doorway of his parlour, staring. The canvas is still just where he left it to dry, leaning against the wall beside the fireplace, but it’s blank now. He stares at it, blinking. Nothing but white. It’s as if he hadn’t painted anything at all.

 

Just as he begins to worry that staying in one place for too long has finally begun to wear on his sanity or whatever is left of it, he spots it sitting right next to the canvas – the TARDIS. It looks exactly as he remembers it, beautiful and blue and full of possibility. Only, it’s a bit smaller than he remembers. Quite a bit smaller. The Doctor ventures cautiously forward and pokes at it. When nothing happens, he picks it up.

 

It fits in the palm of his hand. His hand tingles and after a moment, he realizes this tiny ship is humming in his grip, just like the Old Girl does when he strokes her console with his fingertips. It has been far too long since he last heard his ship greet him and overcome with the memory, the Doctor struggles to swallow the lump forming in his throat. One careful prod of his finger against the doors and they creak open, blue light spilling out onto his wrist as he peers inside.

 

Bigger on the inside.

 

It’s his TARDIS, only smaller.

 

The Doctor offers his old friend a wobbly smile and breathes, “Hello.”

 

“Doctor?” He starts, whirling to find a group of children peering into the parlour at him. “Are you talking to yourself again?”

 

He hesitates, nodding slowly. “Erm, yes. A bit, I suppose.”

 

“How come?”

 

“Well… I’m a brilliant listener.” He beams at them when they giggle, turning from them to place the TARDIS carefully on the mantle, bestowing her with one last little pat. “Now, who wants breakfast?”

 

-

 

After that, he experiments.

 

Some days, he is far too busy fighting off invading forces to pick up the paintbrush but on rare, quiet days, he paints until his fingers cramp. He paints bowls of fruit, a new pocket watch, and a brilliant bluebird. Every single painting disappears from the canvas the moment the paint dries, only to manifest as the real thing. A bowl of fruit he can actually eat, a watch with intricate inner workings that ticks away the minutes, a bluebird that nests on one of his bookshelves and wakes him every morning with its singing.

 

The Doctor grows bolder, armed with a paintbrush and hundreds of years worth of memories. He sketches out an old toy lost long ago – his son’s favorite stuffed bear. When it appears before him, the memory of it clutched in a tiny fist is enough to make his eyes sting. He holds the bear to his chest and when he smells beneath the lingering scent of his son, faint traces of Gallifrey burning, he knows with more certainty than ever that the paintings are not copies created from memory.

 

They’re real.

 

He paints some more, testing proportions by drawing little things like his wedding bowtie and big things like a full-sized sailboat – it had taken ages to collect a canvas large enough and eventually he’d settled on the wall in his parlour. This is how he discovers that the TARDIS on his mantle is so small because he drew it that way. He doesn’t try to draw it again. It isn’t time to go.

 

Instead, he tells the children more stories, keeps hanging up their drawings on the ever-shrinking space on his walls and contemplates what to paint next. He has drawn animals and food and inanimate objects. He has brought to life birds and boats and old mementos he thought he would never see again. The one thing he hasn’t painted is another person. He doesn’t know if it will work but with a certainty that makes his hearts clench, he knows exactly who he wants if it does.

 

He spends six months mixing colors until he’s satisfied that he has captured the exact shade of her hair, a million little hues of yellow and gold and brown and red on his palette. He spends another meticulous year sketching out every single curl, his fingers moving over the canvas with agonizing, dedicated thoroughness. Slowly, painting River Song becomes his life’s work.

 

He still plays with the children, still protects the planet the best he can while he waits for the day he won’t be able to any longer, but the painting is his _raison d’etre_. He spends a week painting the arch of her brows, another three making sure the curl of her lips when she smiles at him is exactly as it should be – all at once teasing and loving. He agonizes over the round apples of her cheeks, flushed a becoming shade of pink after battles and running and long afternoons in bed.

 

For a year, he lives in every memory of her eyes, struggling to capture the light of mischief in them, always lurking behind that knee-weakening devotion. He always loved to kiss that little bump on the bridge of her nose and it takes him an age to get it just right. The rendering of her full, perfect breasts takes him years to recreate to his satisfaction. He doesn’t mind lingering.

 

He paints the slender muscles of her arms and remembers how they flexed when she held her gun in front of her. Her hands come after that, small and capable hands with slim, clever fingers. He takes his time here too, crafting hands that were bred for destruction but used instead to protect him and love him, to forage and sift through centuries of sand for the satisfaction of discovering one perfectly preserved shard of pottery. Hands that held his when they ran and stroked his cheek when he came to her for solace, for shelter in a raging universe. 

 

He delights in imagining the soft swell of her hips and the perfect hourglass shape of her waist, where his hands always curled just so. He paints strong thighs and slender calves, delicate ankles and small, sure feet. He recreates every single aspect of her from his memory alone, like a poet in possession of a paintbrush instead of a pen. He has clung too hard to every piece of River to ever forget, terrified of letting even one memory slip away from him. And so, slowly, the white canvas spills over with color as every careful, tender brushstroke brings River one step closer to life.

 

As the years pass, his hands grow weak and weathered, the bones beneath aching with arthritis. He never once thinks of stopping. He paints through the pain, ever focused on the outcome. The canvas becomes a love letter, every stroke of his brush is another word of his devotion, another testament to every moment he spent memorizing every part of her. It had been time well spent.

 

His hands ache and his knees tremble the day he finishes. Hours spent over a canvas with a paintbrush no longer agree with him. He wipes the paint from his weathered fingers and smiles tremulously down at the painting of his wife – three hundred years in the making. His sight isn’t quite what it used to be but he stares at the canvas spread across his attic floor and thinks _perfect_.

 

He holds in his breath, gripping his paintbrush in a weak fist, and closes his watering eyes, waiting. When he opens them again, she’ll be here. She’ll touch his face and tease him about the wrinkles. She’ll laugh and call him _sweetie_ like not a day has passed since they saw each other last. The years spent drowning in her memory for the sake of bringing her back to him will finally be worth it.

 

He opens his eyes.

 

The breath he’d been holding catches painfully in his throat. River is indeed in front of him. She is beautiful and as vivid as his most visceral memories of her – but not real. She remains on the canvas.  The hand holding his paintbrush begins to shake. He wants to snap it in half. He tosses it away before he can give in to the urge, throwing it violently across the room. It ricochets off the wall and rolls across the floor, stopping right in front of the antique desk where he’d found it centuries ago.

 

Pursing trembling lips, the Doctor tries to reason with himself. Perhaps bringing a person back to life takes more time than a bird or a sailboat. Perhaps the paint isn’t yet dry enough. _Perhaps_ , his traitorous mind whispers, _it isn’t possible at all_. But no. The paintbrush gave him the TARDIS. It can give him his wife too. He’ll wait.

 

He goes to bed that night with hope and fear warring in his hearts. He doesn’t sleep but he keeps his eyes closed, like a child the night before Christmas. In the morning, he checks the attic room.

 

The canvas isn’t blank and the bright, carefully chosen colors splashed across it are a stark reminder that there is no bringing back the dead. He stops painting again. It isn’t long before the little TARDIS on his mantle disappears and he knows that the end is coming for him. He has never felt more ready.

 

-

 

It takes a while but he comes back for the painting five minutes after he left it, wearing a new face but carrying the same bitter grief in his hearts. Christmas is just beginning to quiet, rubble still smoking in the streets and the people safe inside their houses peering out of windows in fear. The Doctor pays them no mind, picking his way through the streets with a scowl, heading for the little house that was home for centuries.

 

It’s been a hundred years since then but he could remember his way up the attic stairs blindfolded. He nearly wore a path in the wood when he lived here, dragging himself up the stairs every day, even when he got too old, even when it hurt. Nothing was more important than the painting.

 

With a bitter curl of his lips, the Doctor steps onto the landing and stares into the little attic room where he spent so much time. The canvas is untouched, spread out on the floor just as he left it. There hadn’t been time to salvage anything the first time but there are crayon drawings in his pockets now that he’ll never admit to saving.

 

The canvas on the floor is the only other thing in this house he’d like to preserve. The paintbrush may have failed him but the drawing of River is still the most detailed portrait he has. It rivals even actual photographs, locked away in his study. After the unfortunate memory loss that plagued him after his regeneration, he’d quite like to have every picture of his late wife’s face in existence – just in case.

 

Cautiously, he steps into the room and edges around the canvas on the floor, careful not to trod on it with his boots. Hands behind his back and lips pursed, he lets his eyes rove over the painting with cool detachment, inspecting it for damage. Anything could have happened to it during the siege but it is entirely free of rips, tears, or singes. It remains as unblemished as the day he finished it.

 

Nothing left but to roll it up and carry it to the TARDIS parked down the street. Stooping to grab one curling edge of the canvas, the Doctor frowns as he pointedly avoids looking at River’s face. He’ll lock it away, deep inside the TARDIS along with everything else that reminds him of her. It’ll be enough to know that it exists, that it’s safe and sound but far from any unfortunate sentimental urges he might have in the future.

 

As he rolls the canvas carefully under his hands – much more graceful this go round though he isn’t quite sure about the rings, they just felt right – his eyes flicker traitorously beneath him to the familiar, still face painted in perfect detail. He pauses, frozen in place as he stares at that wicked smile and those riotous curls, the blue-green eyes that… weren’t finished.

 

His breath hisses out through his clenched teeth.

 

He never finished her eyes.

 

They’re exactly the right shade of green, with just the right expression of tenderness and mischief. The lines around them are perfectly crinkled and he knows without a doubt she would hate them. But in his old age with his tired eyes, he hadn’t noticed that he never finished. He could never quite manage to create a shade that matched the gold flecks in River’s eyes so he left them incomplete, promising himself he would come back to it later. By the time he completed the rest of the painting, he’d been so old he’d simply forgotten he never did.

 

He never finished the painting. Hope rises in his chest and up his throat, threatening to burst out of his mouth in a wide, entirely uncharacteristic grin. The Doctor quickly stifles it, brow furrowed as he unrolls the canvas and steps away from it, glancing wildly around the little attic room. Where is the paintbrush? His adamant refusal to believe this changes anything is the only thing keeping him from scrambling around on the floor like a madman looking for it.

 

The desk, he remembers. After he’d thrown it, the paintbrush had landed beside the desk. He turns to check and sure enough, it’s still sitting there. He steps across the painting carefully and once on the other side, he lunges for the brush like it might try to get away. Sitting on his knees in the middle of the dusty floor, he holds it reverently between his fingers and inspects it for damage.

 

The bristles are in desperate need of cleaning but otherwise it seems perfectly fine.

 

He breathes out a shaky sigh of relief and clears his throat, glancing around to make sure no one bore witness to his mild panic attack but himself. His eyes land on the painting once more and he swallows. He could finish it now but this body is hardly the artist the last one was. He hasn’t the patience for it. Offering the portrait of his wife a half-hearted scowl, he mutters, “It won’t work anyway. You’re dead. Ish.”

 

The painting can’t talk back, of course, but he likes to think if it could, it would offer him that damnable smug grin and say his last body was supposed to be the one terrified of finishing what he started. He sighs and flexes his fingers around the paintbrush, rising slowly from his heels to stand.

 

“Fine, I’ll finish the bloody thing,” he growls, tucking the paintbrush into his pocket. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He rolls up the painting in a few swift, sharp motions, throwing it over his shoulder and stomping his way back down the stairs and out of the house, heading for the TARDIS.

 

He spends another week dithering, traveling the galaxy looking for the right shade of gold paint before he realizes he’s stalling like a sodding coward. In a fit of pique, he snatches up gold paint from a 21st century paint supply shop in the middle of London with a muttered, “Damn well good enough.”

 

With the canvas spread across the control room floor and the Old Girl humming encouragement all around him, the Doctor finishes the painting with tiny, painstaking brushstrokes. His hearts pound out a frantic rhythm as he steps back to inspect his work. Her eyes still aren’t quite the right color but they sparkle the way they always did and it’s certainly close enough.

 

Palms sweating, he unclenches his fingers from around the paintbrush and lets it drop. It leaves a streak of shimmering gold across the floor as it rolls away but he pays it no mind, struggling to swallow the lump in his throat. Every waking moment since he noticed the painting was unfinished has been spent trying to convince himself that it would never work. He stares at the image of his wife his last body had poured his soul into creating. She sprawls across the console room floor now, a perfect rendering of every painful memory, and the Doctor can’t quite dash the hope flooding through his veins or the whispered words in the back of his head.

 

_Maybe it will work._

 

No matter the face, it seems he will always be the eternal optimist, the dreamer of far-flung dreams. Hope is a part of him, of what makes him the Doctor, and if he wasn’t teetering on the precipice of heartbreak once more, he might have spared a moment to be grateful it’s the one thing he never lost from one regeneration to the next. Hair color and taste in food comes and goes. His voice changes and his sartorial choices vary. Even his friends have flitted in and out of his life. But hope – hope always remains.

 

The Doctor stares at the painting with bright, scrutinizing blue eyes, not even allowing himself to blink. Perhaps, he thinks with a touch of desperation, it was always meant to be him to bring back his wee darling psychopath. The old man in the magician’s coat performing the greatest magic trick of them all – bringing back that which was once lost.

 

Well. _Abra-fucking-cadabra_ , then.

 

He closes his eyes.

 

Waiting a beat, he holds his breath and struggles to find the courage to open them again. He readies himself for the inevitable disappointment, to see the canvas beneath him still holding the image of his wife captive. Scowl already in place, he exhales and –

 

 

A warm hand slides softly over his cheek, a tender thumb curiously stroking his skin. Around him, the TARDIS hums in excitement, loud and welcoming.

 

The Doctor purses his lips against a pained gasp and the sound of warm, familiar laughter makes his hearts pinch. Bloody hell, it can’t be. It can’t possibly be –

 

“Oh, my love. What have you done now?”

 

Clinging to hope, his oldest companion, the Doctor opens his eyes. The ones looking back at him are confused but adoring, and finally the perfect shade. He smiles. “Nothing, dear. Just a bit of magic.”


End file.
